After delving into historical trading sim and strategy games like the Patrician series and Port Royale, the European developer Ascaron are heading into new territory for them with a Diablo-like fantasy action-RPG game entitled Sacred. HomeLAN received a beta copy of the game from its US publisher Encore Software for a test drive.

The fantasy land that you explore in Sacred is named Ancaia, which the folks at Ascaron have divided into 16 distinct regions of the game, with quite a variety of environments to explore. The dev team has made the vast majority of the lands open to the player at the start of the game with the rest of the lands unlocked at later points. Some other twists that have been incorporated into the game include a day and night cycle, changing weather condition and horses which can be ridden by players.